Later still I just felt bad. And more than a little ashamed of myself.

You see, in my community here in Overland Park, Kansas we have leash laws. This means that when you have your dog out on a walk, you are legally obliged to have him or her on a leash.

It’s not a good idea. It’s not a suggestion.

It’s a LAW.

And happily enough, most people comply with the leash law.

But now and then there are a few folks we meet on the trail who don’t.

When I meet them, I try and speculate on their reasons for ignoring the leash law. I wonder to myself:

“Maybe they are new to town and aren’t aware of the leash law.”

“Maybe they have extraordinarily well-trained dogs who stay right by their master’s side, or else who come immediately when they are called.”

“Maybe their last leash broke and they haven’t been able to afford to go get a new one yet.”

Normally the sight of an unleashed dog wouldn’t bother me. However, the last dog we had (dearly departed little Molly) was VERY aggressive toward other dogs when we were out for a walk. Molly would viciously growl and snap at them and tug on the leash as if to say, “Let me at ‘em! Let me at ‘em!”I worried that an unleashed dog might forget their careful obedience training and respond to her aggressiveness with similar aggression.

Because, you know, they are dogs… animals directly descended from wolves.

So there I was the other day, happily walking Rosie on the walking trail when what did I see but a lab/something or other mix walking up the trail toward us, unleashed. Trailing behind her was her master… holding a folded up leash in her hand.

I paused and had Rosie sit down next to me, warily regarding the other dog. It approached and began sniffing Rosie in a curious, “Hey, what are you all about anyway?” fashion.

As the owner approached I said, tersely, “Is that dog OK?” Meaning is it friendly.

She replied, “Oh yes… she’s fine.”

To which I responded, “You know there IS a leash law in this community.”

The woman seemed a little taken aback by my abruptness. She looked at me and said, “Yes… I know.”

Unsatisfied with her obvious lack of remorse, I pressed the attack. “Well, then maybe then you should try to OBEY IT!”

Bending down to clip the leash on her dog, she sighed tiredly, said, “Have a nice day,” and continued down the trail.

Like I said… my first feelings following that encounter were feelings of righteousness and empowerment. I mean, what the heck?! A law is a law, right? I’M following it… you should too!

But the further the event receded into the past, the worse I felt. Yes, of course, I stood on the side of legality in that situation. But what had I demonstrated to that person by the way I chose to handle the situation? Did I demonstrate kindness? Or compassion? Or anything even remotely Christ-like in the way I responded to her and her dog?

Being the pastoral type that I am, I immediately began flashing back to Paul’s words in Romans 7 and 8. I heard an updated version of his description of the life devoted to serving the LAW compared to the life devoted to serving the SPIRIT.

In those passages, I’m pretty sure Paul wasn’t talking about leash laws, but he might as well have been.

But then here is where I went from being mildly mopey about the whole thing to being ashamed and embarrassed; it was the point at which I asked myself, “OK, caped crusader… you seem to be more than willing to speak out loud and clear against the injustices of suburbanites ignoring leash laws. But tell me… are you just as willing to speak out against REAL social injustices? For example, injustices like systemic racism, or economic injustice, or sexism, or homophobia or hunger? Are you willing to risk consequences that might be more serious than a sullen scowl from a neighbor?”

I sincerely hope my answer to that question would be “YES.” And heck, maybe I am preparing myself to do exactly that.

But for now, I think I will pick a different path for our morning walk… making sure I ALWAYS have my dog on her leash.

Like this:

I’ll go ahead and admit it: most of the time, I really don’t like waking up.

When my alarm clock rings, it almost always intrudes on a nice, restful sleep. Sometimes its obnoxious sound comes crashing in to the middle of a wonderful, warm, fuzzy dream… leaving me to wonder if I ever did find that buried treasure, or fly to South America (under the power of my own arms, of course), or receive that Nobel Prize.

And if you have ever tried to do this, of course, you know that you can’t ever flip over, hit the “Snooze” or “Off” button on the alarm and keep on dreaming the same dream.

It is gone… like a puff of smoke.

I have also discovered that here lately there are a whole series of creaks and pops and sharp pains that arrive shortly after I begin stirring from my slumber.

And I wonder, “What that is all about? It certainly wasn’t always like that…”

In fact, you could say that waking up is just one gigantic – yet necessary – pain. It is with good reason it is sometimes referred to as “… a rude awakening.”

It is also what I sincerely hope is beginning to happen in this country right now.

In the light of the kind of week we have just endured… where we have seen new examples of over-reaction by police officers that have left black men dead and then the horrific slaughter of police officers by an angry, deranged vigilante… we can do little more than cry out in pain, anger, and confusion.

But do you think it is possible that these pains could also be the pains of a moment of long overdue awakening?

I want to be careful not to seem to be rushing to paint a smiley face onto a set of truly heartrending events. But I do want to ask whether we believe this tragic and unique moment could well have given us a rare opportunity.

Is it possible that this moment has given us an opportunity to REALLY listen… to REALLY take stock… to REALLY face up to and repent of the darkness that resides in each one of our hearts?

Is it possible that this moment in our country is similar to that moment when – after years and years of listening to your doctor blather on about how you need to exercise more, drink less, cut down on your red meat consumption, and all the other blah, blah, blah nonsense he talks about – the heart attack finally hits and you say, “OH! So THAT’S what she was talking about!”

Yes, I believe it is possible that this is indeed just such an awakening moment. But it can only actually BECOME that moment if we act on it… if we take actual steps in the direction of dropping assumptions based on ignorance and/or privilege… if we engage in conversations that seek to understand vs. conversations that seek to prove our point… if we reach out to hold the hand of a brother or sister we have previously shunned.

Some of us, I know, would really prefer to go back to sleep and pretend that alarm clock never rang. Some would love to retreat back into the comfortable recesses of the familiar and fuzzy world our exhausted brains have created for us.

But Slumberland is not where the work gets done. It is the place that lets us go on approximating reality without actually engaging it.

And so, even though it could be painful, sudden, and not exactly what we had in mind, the time is now to wake up, get busy, and do the hard work we were created to do.